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To say that 东西 means "east and west" is to misunderstand how Chinese forms words from individual characters. I assure you that no Chinese person thinks of 吃东西 as "literally mean[ing] eating east and west"; it just means "something," full stop. The two uses aren't even pronounced the same: 东西 meaning "something" is pronounced dōngxi (xi is neutral tone), while the phrase 东西 meaning "east and west" is pronounced dōngxī (full first tone on both syllables).
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JonJan 28 '12 at 1:10

An analogous example: no native English speaker's first thought upon hearing the word "airport" is "a place where ships dock, but for things from the air!" That may be the word's origin, but in no sense is it its literal meaning.
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JonJan 28 '12 at 1:20

@Jon I was certainly aware that the literal interpretation was not the best one, or even a slightly correct one for that matter; it's not the first language I'm studying. But since I'm a beginner in Chinese, I'm allowed to have doubts in this sense, because I have to still grasp the mechanisms of Chinese. I understand why you wrote those comments, but I feel they are a bit out of place.
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Alenanno♦Jan 28 '12 at 9:52

It's not just for food, it's to say "something" in general. It's quite a convenient word when you don't know how something is called - eg. 我要这个东西! Really don't know about the etymology though.
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this.lau_Jan 28 '12 at 10:18

@戴洛弘 I understand that the etymology is not easy to retrieve. Feel free to post an answer on the rest of the question.
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Alenanno♦Jan 28 '12 at 10:19

4 Answers
4

This is a good question about etymology of Chinese word. Most native speakers are not interested in etymology as they can speak out of habit while non-native speakers are more curious on how the sense of words evolves. Back to your question, there are nice articles on both Wikipedia and Baidu Baike that explains the etymology of "东西". Since there are acutally quite a few explanations for this one, so I cannot translate them all here. But I can help you if you have trouble to understand particular sentences.

"东西" almost always means "something," though as Don says you might more gracefully translate it by another word. And as Jon commented, when it does not mean "something", then it is pronounced differently.

Friends in Taiyuan told me of a conference of Eastern and Western Provinces in China that did not include the (central) province of Shanxi. They joked on the two meanings by saying "山西不是东西." A more careful grammarian could spoil the joke by saying "山西不是东西方。"